


the bottom half of the hourglass

by nex_et_nox



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nex_et_nox/pseuds/nex_et_nox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompts for Flashvibe Summer 2016</p><p>Day 1: AU Day -- "Can you finally see me?" he asked.<br/>Days 2 and 3: Social Media/Poly Ship -- [Photo on Instagram of three grinning faces crowding in front of a camera stretched out to fit all three of them and a glimpse of the beach behind them.]<br/>Day 4: Neighbors/Roommates AU -- Cisco carried a badge. It was his duty and responsibility to save peoples' lives. Especially if he knew about it beforehand.<br/>Day 5: Free (Coffee Shop AU) -- "What's your name?" Barry asked, once it became obvious that he was going to be coming to this coffee shop a lot in the foreseeable future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cisco shut the Pipeline on Ronnie, because time had run out, because this was going to save hundreds, if not thousands, of more people, because Ronnie had made him swear, and he curled against it. He sobbed drily, terrified and already grieving and this was supposed to be a good day, a _great_ day, for them all and now – it was this.

He wished for nothing more than to be able to reach through and pull Ronnie to safety.

Cisco was still thinking that when the particle accelerator gathered itself for one final, cataclysmic shake. The explosion burst across the whole city. It killed eighteen people in total, two of them down in the bowels of STAR Labs, trying to contain it.

* * *

(Well.

It didn’t really kill them.

But no one would realize that for a while to come.)

* * *

One of the weirdest things about being the Flash and having superspeed – and wow, it was weird _enough_ just thinking that – were the flashes (ha) of something Barry could only glimpse out of the corner of his eyes. It wasn’t the lightning; or at least, he didn’t think it was.

It was darker, like a shadow cast against the arcs crackling around him. Or like a person – an insubstantial presence Barry was sure he was imagining half the time – except there were no other speedsters save for the Man in Yellow. This wasn’t the Man in Yellow.

No matter how he tried to look at it, it always managed to slip away as he turned.

Something in Barry kept him from mentioning it to Dr. Wells or Caitlin. They could help him with it – but he didn’t want them to know.

He watched the shadow behind him and wondered.

* * *

One night Barry sped into STAR Labs, later than usual. Dr. Wells and Caitlin were already long gone; they’d called it an early night because there were so few crimes, but Barry was restless. He went for a run, trying to clear his mind or tire himself out, only to end up at STAR Labs.

Barry somehow found himself going slowly through the empty halls, wandering with no real purpose. They didn’t use most of the buildings that made up STAR Labs; there were only three of them, and most of their work was run out of the Cortex. The Pipeline was used to house their metahuman criminals, of course, but that still wasn’t much of a walk from the Cortex, and they always took the most direct path to it. There were all sorts of little side hallways and workrooms that no one used anymore.

(There was one room in particular that had been left as it was, in respect and mourning.

“The explosion that put you in a coma killed my fiancé and my best friend,” Caitlin had said, fixing the headset on him that first day. Her eyes lingered on it, a plain red patch nestled against his ears, and something small and complicated passed across her face before she turned away and walked back to Dr. Wells.)

A soft noise, thunder quietly sweeping up behind lightning. An oppressing weight in the air, like the world for once pushed heavily back at Barry instead of letting him slip around everything. The sharp scent of ozone.

An unfamiliar figure passing the half-opened door of one of the workrooms, trailing his hand over the papers still littered over the desk inside.

“Hey!” Barry said, because Caitlin had talked about him sometimes, Cisco Ramon. How much he would have loved all this. Dr. Wells had mentioned him occasionally as well, and Barry didn’t prod at that grief because he was uncomfortably sure that he recognized it.

Whoever this was that had broken into STAR Labs – they shouldn’t be in this of all rooms.

Barry burst into the workroom. The intruder didn’t look up, still tracing words from the blueprints scattered all over the tables, lips moving soundlessly. Dark hair fell over his shoulders, curling slightly against the graphic T-shirt and sports blazer he was wearing.

“Who are you?” Barry asked, incandescently furious. He had never known Cisco Ramon, but from the gaping hole that he had left in Caitlin and Dr. Wells, he had been so terribly loved, and this person had _no right_ to break in here and violate one of the last places that held memories of him.

The intruder looked up slowly. His brow furrowed.

“Can you finally see me?” he asked. His voice was – strange. Wrong. It warbled and warped, a radio tuned halfway between a station and the static void. It came from further away than his body.

Barry couldn’t help but take a step back, unnerved.

“ _Gracias a Dios_ ,” the intruder breathed, his words barely audible. “Oh, thank God. I thought no one would ever—” He rubbed a hand over his face, eyes glassy, and Barry understood.

“The particle accelerator,” Barry said, in awful comprehension. “You were affected by the particle accelerator – you’re a metahuman.”

“Yeah,” the intruder, the _metahuman_ , said, and he still shouldn’t be in here, but Barry found himself already reaching out.

“My name’s Barry Allen. I work here. Kind of. We can help you.”

An unsteady smile. “I know who you are. I’ve been following you for months, trying to get you to notice me. My name is Cisco Ramon.”

Barry froze.

* * *

As a rule, Caitlin did not like getting phone calls at three in the morning, especially from Barry Allen. It almost always meant that he had done something incredibly foolish. She may have, along with Dr. Wells, eventually capitulated under his desire to be out there superheroing, and they could both admit that he _was_ doing good, but when he went out by himself, Caitlin often found herself wanting to strangle him.

“What?” she ground out into her phone. She hadn’t been able to pick up the first call in time, the ringing having barely woken her up from her sleep before it hit voicemail, but _Barry Allen_ flashed insistently on the screen as he called her again immediately.

“You need to get to STAR Labs, now,” Barry said.

“Dammit, Barry, are you injured ag—?” Caitlin started.

“I’m fine,” Barry said. “It’s – something else. You _need_ to get here.”

Damn it all, but Caitlin trusted him. If he said that he needed her, if it was as serious as his tone implied, then she would be there.

“I’m on my way,” Caitlin said, and ended the call.

Twenty minutes later, she walked into the Cortex to see Barry pacing restlessly back and forth, sparks of lightning trailing behind him lazily. No one and nothing else was there.

“What’s going on?” Caitlin asked.

Barry’s expression got complicated. His eyes darted to the computer monitors – to the empty chair in front of the computer monitors – before coming back to her.

“Shit,” he said, very soft.

“ _Barry_ ,” Caitlin said.

“…I met a new metahuman tonight,” Barry said. Caitlin’s eyes narrowed. If he had gone out again after she and Dr. Wells had left, he was going to be in _trouble_ — “He needs our help, Caitlin. Like Bette did.”

Caitlin’s ire left her. “Where is he?” she asked, moving toward her office area/med-bay to grab supplies they might need, and why couldn’t Barry have brought him here if this mysterious metahuman was injured or in enough danger to justify calling her in the middle of the night…?

“Caitlin,” Barry said. He was saying her name with the utmost delicacy. “You might…want to sit down.”

Caitlin paused, already reaching past the med-bay bed where Barry had spent so much time laid up – both in his coma and out – for more supplies, but at this she turned. She settled carefully on the edge of the bed.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.

Barry fidgeted, making another one of those sideways glances toward the computer monitors, and once was negligible, but Caitlin had the creeping suspicion that it wasn’t a coincidence. Like the breathless moment just before everything had gone truly wrong the night of the particle accelerator explosion, Caitlin felt a trembling unease and almost didn’t want to know what this was.

“It’s – Cisco. The metahuman that needs help is Cisco Ramon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, basically what happened is that Cisco became Vibe, but his powers manifested and promptly overloaded right then, and since in canon we’ve seen that he can enter the Speed Force/be between our reality and the Speed Force…he got stuck. What Barry saw behind him all the time was Cisco peeking out of the Speed Force where he was trapped, but he never had enough power/finesse to get all the way back or make himself even enough part of this reality to be seen.
> 
> Of course, he finally managed it, if incompletely. Barry can see Cisco because Barry has enough of the Speed Force in him that he can see Cisco. 
> 
> Just imagine: Cisco wandering the in-between dimension for months, falling over the edge into the Speed Force version of his reality (which strange and wrong and the Speed Force wouldn’t tell him how to get back, just gazed at him pityingly) and even when he pushed back toward his own dimension, Dr. Wells and Caitlin still couldn’t see him. 
> 
> Then Barry wakes up. 
> 
> Eventually, this would end up being a whole adventure where they pull Cisco from the Speed Force, but before that happens Barry is the only one that can see/interact with Cisco (Wellsobard is either lying about being able to see him or the Speed Force in his system is so depleted he actually can’t see Cisco). And they start falling in love and then Cisco is out and rediscovering his powers in reality (bc there were things he couldn’t do while in the Speed Force) and they fall in love for real and fight crime.


	2. Chapter 2

"How do you always manage to pull this off, West?" Scott asks, standing next to Iris' desk and staring down at his tablet, obviously scanning through the email and attached piece she had just sent to him: an exclusive interview with Central City's newest superhero.

Iris looks at him. "I suppose I'm a very good reporter," she says, smile bland and unrevealing. "And I have very good connections."

She sweeps up her bag and grabs her coffee mug from her desk, moving around her editor as his eyes flick over her latest work again, slipping out the door and into the sunshine. Heading back to her home and the two men waiting for her there.

* * *

[Video; shaky footage of Vibe and Flash fighting against a metahuman across the street from the person filming.

Vibe raises his hands, fierce concentration evident on his face despite the glowing blue glasses, and the metahuman combatant is thrown backwards. Flash darts in, clicking power-dampening cuffs against the metahuman's wrists before looking up at his partner.

"Vibe uses Sonic Attack," Flash says, too-pleased grin wide on his face and in his warbling voice. "It's _super effective_."

Vibe and the person filming start laughing at the same moment.]

* * *

Cisco strips from his gear, tossing his jacket over the back of a chair and stretching. "Ugh," he sighs, rolling onto the balls of his feet as he arches his back slightly and splays his fingers, enjoying the feel of it in his tense back muscles.

Iris glances up from her spot at the kitchen table, hunched over her laptop, papers spread all around her. "Barry going to be back soon?"

"Yeah, he just wanted to grab some more calorie bars from STAR. We're almost out here," Cisco says. He understands the underlying question – that Iris wants to know they're both okay, that Barry hasn't returned yet for innocuous reasons, not because he's hurt.

"Take out will be here soon," Iris says.

"What kind?" Cisco asks, because he and Barry had rushed out with quick kisses to Iris' cheek, responding to an alert of another metahuman attacking downtown, while they were still debating what to have for dinner.

"Thai," Iris says.

"Yes!" Cisco says, victorious. Barry is a weenie when it comes to the Thai curries that Cisco and Iris both love to order as hot as they come; he always ends up ordering a lot of Pad Thai instead. He also tries to get out of ordering Thai whenever possible.

Iris grins. When Barry and the food arrive, they'll curl in front of the couch, talking and laughing and putting something on Netflix to relax from a long day, but for now Cisco grabs a glass of water and settles at the table with his girlfriend and waits for Barry to get back.

* * *

[Photo on Instagram of three grinning faces crowding in front of a camera stretched out to fit all three of them and a glimpse of the beach behind them.

11 likes

**bhallen** finally vacation! what better place than the beach? #vacationselfie [line of three emoji: sun, waves, shell]

**ciscoramon** best weather to be here with you and @iriswest

**iriswest** <3

July 30]


	3. Chapter 3

Cisco groaned, resting his head against his front door as he closed it with a thump. It had been a damn long day; balancing his work as Vibe and his work with the Anti-Metahuman Task Force – he always felt a crawling unease about that name, no matter that he'd begun working for them before he ever realized that he was a metahuman himself, and thank god no one had figured out how to identify metahumans unless they were blatantly using their powers in front of someone – was difficult on the best of days. This had not been one of them.

One of the few things that he could be grateful for was that at least it was easy to switch between his work outfit and his vigilante outfit – he had specifically designed his jacket to reverse easily, so he stuffed it in the bottom of his bag in its "civilian" mode and simply flipped it inside-out when he needed to be Vibe. The glasses were similarly easy to hide, though if anyone actually found them, he'd have some 'splaining to do.

As for the rest of it...he had stuff stashed around CCPD, mostly his work locker, but he could make do with what he was wearing. He'd learned to wear dark pants and sturdy shoes every day.

It was just so difficult sometimes. No one knew who he was; there was no one that he could _trust_. Flash worked with him occasionally, if they ended up at a crime scene at the same time – sometimes Cisco ended up there before him, even, because of his visions – but Cisco could tell he was uncertain about him. It was dispiriting.

What the hell else could he do, though?

He had visions ahead of time. He couldn't count on the Flash always getting there in time. He sometimes saw people _die_.

Cisco carried a badge. It was his duty and responsibility to save peoples' lives. Especially if he _knew about it beforehand_.

Sometimes he could subtly direct things as Cisco Ramon: start heading in the direction of an about-to-be crime, speed through a red light a little faster, call in anonymous tips (carefully using his vibrational powers to warp his voice so it wouldn't be recognized).

Every life saved was so important.

He was exhausted.

* * *

Another long day stretching into the spreading evening shadows, and Cisco shoved his key into his apartment door. It stuck, and he blew out a frustrated breath. He wiggled it sideways, hoping it would turn without having to—

Nope.

He pulled the key back out, glaring at the doorknob, and then to the left of him, "Damn it!"

Cisco jumped.

There was a guy standing at the apartment door next to Cisco's apartment, obviously frustrated by the same sticky lock that Cisco was. Except Cisco could have sworn there was no one else in the hallway when he'd entered it, and he hadn't been here long enough – nor had he been deep enough in his mind – to have missed this guy coming in.

"Sorry," the guy said, sheepish, having caught Cisco's sideways glance at him.

_Cute_ , was Cisco's first impression, followed by, _Stop that, your last two relationships did **not** turn out well._

"So it's not just my door, then," Cisco said, instead of voicing either of those thoughts.

"Looks like," the guy said ruefully. "Um. I'm your neighbor. I guess? Hi."

Cisco tilted his head to the side. "I wasn't sure you existed," he said. "Except for the occasional Lady Gaga filtering through the walls..."

The guy flushed red. "Sorry," he said again.

"It's fine," Cisco laughed. "I like Gaga. Oh! I'm Cisco. Ramon."

"Barry Allen," Cisco's neighbor said, his brow wrinkling at Cisco's name, like he was trying to place it, his hand outstretched to shake his hand, and—

"You're Detective West's son!" Cisco said, brain-to-mouth filter refusing to work as he blurted out the connection as soon as he recognized it. And yeah, he could vaguely recall seeing this guy rushing around CCPD. Mostly he just knew him by how Captain Singh yelled for him all the time.

Barry stared at him weirdly, hand halting halfway to Cisco.

(Not that Cisco probably would have taken it. Even now, he was still sometimes adjusting to his powers, and he shied away from touch because of it.)

"Wow, that sounded sketchy," Cisco said. "I work at the CCPD. With Detective West."

Barry huffed a laugh. "On the Task Force?"

A squirming feeling in his stomach, and Cisco barely contained a wince. He supposed it was obvious, since he had mentioned Barry's father by name, but this had been – a bad day to be on the Task Force. He wanted to get away and forget.

Except he had to go into work the next day. Deal with the clean up. Hold his powers tight against his skin and pray that no one ever found him out, because he didn't _know_ what the reaction would be. But he could hazard a guess.

Cisco thought most of the people on the Task Force were good people, who wanted to do the right thing and help the city. He was terrified of what those good people would do to him if they ever figured out what he was.

It would only take one slip-up.

"Yeah," Cisco said, and hoped his voice didn't come out as tight as it felt. He cleared his throat. He needed to get _away_. "I guess I'll see you around, then?"

An invisible twist of will and vibrations, the tumblers of the lock clicking into place as he brute force shoved them instead of letting the key continue to stick. He twisted his wrist with the motion of it, and let a small smile creep onto his face.

"Yeah," Barry said, going back to fiddling with his own key now that it was clear the conversation was over. "I guess so."

* * *

Joe was probably right that Barry needed to be more careful with his powers. He sometimes let himself forget that just because people couldn’t see him moving past, didn’t mean they didn’t know he was there. And it would be too easy to figure him out if he always suddenly reappeared somewhere when there was no way he could have been there seconds before. If there was ever leftover lightning still clinging to him, then he would be doomed right then and there.

Case in point, this evening, when he hadn’t even thought about flashing straight into his apartment’s hallway. He had never seen his neighbor, but there was always a first time for everything. Like tonight. When he was suddenly _there_ and frustrated with his key when he should have just phased through the door on his approach and he was caught.

By someone who worked at CCPD.

With Joe.

On the Task Force.

Barry was pretty sure that the universe was fucking with him sometimes. Or laughing uproariously. An even mix of the two, probably.

Though the guy – Cisco – seemed kind of. Uh. Not very enthused to be on the Task Force. Or maybe he was _too_ enthused to be on the Task Force, and it was the metahumans that had made his eyes go dark and his movements jerky.

A lot of people in Central City didn’t like metahumans. Whenever Barry thought about that, whenever he imagined what it would be like if he weren’t the Flash, if he were another metahuman but still _himself_ , no more of a hero than he had been but no villain either – it scared him. How people might look at him.

He’d seen it too often.

Maybe most of the metahumans he interacted with were the ones starting fights, robbing banks, attacking the city – but there _were_ metahumans out there that didn’t want anything like that. There were metahumans like Bette, who were being exploited for their abilities and hunted and hurt; there were people like Eiling who were doing that; there were people too afraid to come forward, even to the Flash, to seek help or advice.

On dark nights, Barry shook himself apart, trying to contain the panic. Trying to not to think of the way that people had stared at him and whispered about him for being _Henry Allen’s son_ , even when Barry knew he was innocent.

Barry was all too sure that the metahumans caught up in this mess, who only wanted to live their lives – they wouldn’t be treated any better than an eleven-year-old child trying to stay afloat in a malicious sea that only wanted to condemn him.

There were so few metahumans out there trying to prove the whole city wrong, that they weren’t inhuman and terrible. Barry. Firestorm. Vibe, maybe. It was only fair for civilians not to want to involve themselves, to protect themselves from the dangers of fighting other metahumans and the potential fallout if they ended up outed as metas.

But the responsibility resting on Barry’s shoulders was paralyzing.

So few, against a tide of hate that could all too easily erupt.

Barry wanted to believe the best of people. Once in a while, in the middle of the night, he couldn’t.

* * *

“Cisco, right?” a voice said from right beside him.

Cisco flinched, hard; fortunately, he had already lifted his hand away from doing the delicate repair work on one of the Task Force’s power-dampening cuffs, so nothing was irreparably ruined as it would have been if he was still deep in the guts of one of them. The way his heart was jackhammering in his chest, though, he may as well have done so.

He dropped the tweezers he’d been using, hastily shoving his shaking hands under the table and meeting Barry Allen’s eyes where he stood on the other side of Cisco’s desk. He should have been able to see Barry’s shadow fall across the table, should have been able to hear him approach—

Except he was still on edge from yesterday, from the cleanup this morning, from the constant singing fear which grew every day, that someone would _discover him_. Barry Allen was too quiet when Cisco was dug so deeply into his work trying to forget everything that made him want to curl in a frightened ball in his apartment and never leave or have a vision again.

“Holy hell, dude,” Cisco said, trying for casual. His smile wavered at the edges.

“Sorry,” Barry said, shifting his weight, and wow. Cisco had met him twice, for a total of maybe five minutes, and he had already said sorry like, three times. Either Cisco was a more terrible person than he’d realized or Barry Allen was an extremely apologetic person and, well, Cisco felt bad about always saying shit that would force him to keep saying sorry.

“It’s fine,” Cisco said. “I think we’ve all been strung a little tight over the past few days.” He bit down anything else that he wanted to say, clenching one hand into a fist under his desk, trying to control the tremors.

“Right,” Barry said. Yeah. Most of the CCPD had probably heard what they’d been dealing with. “Well, I was visiting Joe—” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder, pointing at where Detective West was filling out paperwork at his desk, half-eaten basket of fries left abandoned, and with a start Cisco realized he must have been working so hard on the cuffs he had forgotten that he needed to take a break for food. “—and then I saw you and thought I’d say hi?”

“Hi,” Cisco said wryly.

“Hi,” Barry said, and there was another shift in his weight before he awkwardly waved a hand and turned to start walking away. “I mean. I already. Uh, well. Bye. Until – whenever.”

Cisco couldn’t help but laugh, some of the tension releasing from his body. Barry was endearing. He glanced at his phone; it was only 12:30.

“Hey,” Cisco said impulsively. Barry turned. “You still on your lunch break? I had forgotten about it until you walked up to my desk, so…”

“Up for some company?” Barry asked, easy grin settling on his face.

Cisco thought of the deaths, the destruction, the blank and despairing eyes, the grim and angry efforts of all the members of the Task Force as they raced against the clock, trying to save as many lives as possible—

Too few. Even with Vibe’s warnings. Even with the Flash’s interference.

“Yeah,” Cisco said, shoving nightmares back down where they belonged and holding himself in the here and now. “The burger joint around the corner good with you?”

“Sounds great,” Barry said. They walked to the elevator together, half-uncomfortable silence between them, before Barry cleared his throat. “So have long have you been working with the CCPD?”

“Not long, all things considered,” Cisco said. “I used to work at Mercury Labs, before STAR’s particle accelerator blew. When we started realizing what was happening, what it had done – Mercury Labs is working to help some on their end. I thought I could help the police on this side.”

“Wait, so, the—” Barry started, as the elevator arrived, emptying its passengers. They stepped in. “Did you design the Boots?”

Cisco grinned, pleased that Barry had figured that out. It wasn’t an immediate leap of logic. “Hell yeah I did,” he said, reaching for the first floor button at the same moment that Barry did. Their hands brushed.

Cisco’s world dissolved into blue.

* * *

“Sorry,” Barry said reflexively, an automatic reaction when his hand brushed Cisco’s. Between what had happened with his family, general bullying, his anxiety, and his constant tardiness, it seemed like he spent half his life apologizing. It really was a reflex by now. He pushed the button and said, “That’s really cool, man.” It had made the police’s job a lot easier, and the Flash’s, too, by proxy.

Cisco wasn’t there.

Oh, he was physically present. He was frozen in place, his arm still reaching for the elevator button, but _he_ was gone. His eyes were fixed on some point ahead of him, like he was staring at something that Barry couldn’t see, and his teeth were gritted in something that almost seemed like pain. A muscle flexed in his jaw.

“Cisco,” Barry said. He kept it quiet, kept it determined but otherwise as calm as possible. He shifted a little in front of the other man, trying to figure out if this was something natural or something caused by a metahuman that simply hadn’t effected Barry, and _what was his life_ that he had to always wonder that now—

Except before he could get a good look at Cisco’s eyes, Cisco was flinching back, suddenly animated and there and terrified. He shoved himself in the corner of the elevator, as far away from Barry as he could possibly be, his face completely drained of color.

“Cisco,” Barry said cautiously, his hands held raised and open by his shoulders. He could feel himself falling into his calming, everything’s-going-to-be-okay Flash voice. “You’re in an elevator at the CCPD. I’m Barry Allen, your neighbor. Are you okay?”

The elevator door dinged open before Cisco could do more than blink a few times, trying to understand the question from whatever haze he’d been pulled under.

“Out,” Cisco croaked. “I need – out –”

No fool, Barry stepped out of the elevator and let Cisco rush past him, through the lobby and down the front steps, into the cool fall air. Barry followed him from a safe distance.

Cisco had his arms wrapped around himself, staring off into the middle distance across the street as his body wracked itself in chills that Barry suspected didn’t have anything to do with the autumn air. He didn’t look like he was lost again like he had been in the elevator, but Barry still deliberately scuffed his feet as he approached Cisco from behind. The last two times Barry had been unexpectedly there had already proven to freak Cisco out, and that didn’t seem like anything he needed more of right now.

“I don’t want to – to pry, or step on any lines, but,” Barry started, “was that a panic attack, or was it – something else?”

Cisco shook his head, a non-answer. Barry didn’t know if it was meant to tell him to stop asking, or if it was neither of those, or what, so he pressed his luck.

“Cisco, was that natural or did something happen to you?” Barry asked. “Did a metahuman—”

“Don’t!” Cisco said, voice high and sharp-edged with keening terror. He took a staggering step back, away from Barry. “Don’t – don’t say it out loud, don’t tell any of them, I don’t know what they’ll _do_ —”

Barry stayed exactly where he was, holding his calm expression and level tone. “Do you need help? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Something that hadn’t come up in the background checks when they let him into the CCPD, or something that had cropped up afterwards, or—

“They think we’re all monsters,” Cisco choked out, still shaking all over. His eyes darted toward the CCPD building. “The Task Force. The city. I don’t know what they’ll _do._ ”

Barry gathered all the pieces together and understand, swift and blinding and painful like the lightning that had given him his powers.

_Oh, God._

Cisco was a metahuman.

And he was terrified of what the CCPD might do if they knew.

“You’re calling in sick for the rest of the day,” Barry said, uncompromising. “I’m taking you back to your apartment right now.” He reached out, carefully telegraphing his intentions, to pull at Cisco’s shoulder.

He eeled away.

“Don’t,” Cisco said, teeth chattering now with the force of his fear. “It – I can’t – ”

Cisco’s hand brushed his in the elevator, before that blankness had crossed his face. His power was probably something to do with touch, like how Bette’s had been.

“Okay,” Barry said. “Okay. But we need to go.”

Shakily, Cisco followed him.

* * *

Cisco wasn’t really sure how he made it back to his apartment. Barry was there, with him, but the whole thing was a blur, made up of staying as far away from other people as possible on the sidewalk, wary of any brush against him that could trigger another vision.

That – that – on top of the last couple of days, he saw _that_ , somehow connected to Barry. Something he didn’t understand, but had an immediate, visceral reaction to.

What the hell was happening to him?

“Cisco,” Barry said quietly from beside him. “Do you have your keys?”

Did he—? Yeah. He’d taken them with him when he left his desk. He pulled them out, hand moving on autopilot to unlock his door.

The damn keys stuck. Of course they did.

He was too jittery to even think about trying to use vibrations to unstick them, to get the stupid lock to turn, and he could feel frustrated tears prick at the corners of his eyes. He’d had a _bad_ several days, he didn’t need this—

“Hey,” Barry said. “Let me.”

Cisco stepped aside. Waiting for timeless moments before the door was open and Barry was ushering him inside.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Barry asked. Cisco nodded. He made his way over to his couch and just collapsed, everything rattling out in the safety of his own space. A brief and literal rattle, tiny vibrations rolling off him and hitting the floor and decorations, because this was—

He was going to be sick.

A glass of water was pushed into his hands. Barry held onto it until he could see that Cisco wasn’t going to drop it immediately, and then he took a few steps back.

“I’m going to call Joe for you, okay?”

The glass shattered in his hands. Cisco stared dully down at the shards on the floor, the blood dripping through lax fingers.

Barry swore. “I’m going to stay in the room with you,” he said. “You can listen to everything I say. I’m not going to tell him.” A pause, momentary hesitation. “They wouldn’t hurt you, if they knew. _Joe_ wouldn’t hurt you.”

“You can’t know that for certain,” Cisco said, voice reed-thin.

Barry didn’t argue, simply hit something on his phone and called Detective West. “Hey, Joe. I went out with Cisco for lunch – yeah, Cisco Ramon, turns out we live next door to each other – yeah. He was kind of dizzy, looked bad, admitted he felt bad, so I helped him back to his place – he’s throwing up in his toilet right now, Joe, he can’t come to the phone – yeah. Yeah. I’ll be back soon. Love you. Bye.”

Some of the chill gripping Cisco – lifted.

There was nothing guaranteeing that Barry wouldn’t simply tell Joe and the Task Force the truth as soon as he was back at the CCPD, but for now, some of that overwhelming fear pinning him down disappeared.

Barry knelt in front of the couch, carefully picking up clicking pieces of broken glass. Cisco didn’t move. He’d need to get a vacuum later, to get the little shards. For now, he needed to _not move._

“Do you want to talk about it?” Barry asked, after ducking into Cisco’s kitchen and tossing the glass into the trash. He still stood at a distance, trying to not crowd Cisco. That thoughtfulness was what probably pushed him over the edge into honesty.

(And if he could convince Barry he was harmless, maybe he wouldn’t turn him in to the CCPD.)

“I get – visions. When I touch people, objects. Things that have happened. Things that are happening. Things that might.”

“The particle accelerator basically made you psychic,” Barry said.

_And psychokinetic. Except not really, because it’s all vibrations. And I’m Vibe._

“Yeah,” Cisco said.

“It’s not against the law to be a metahuman, you know,” Barry said. “You’re working with the CCPD, you haven’t broken any laws – right?”

Cisco shook his head. Unless they were counting the vigilantism, which really only skirted the line, then no.

“So you’re fine,” Barry said. He looked down at his watch and grimaced. “I’ve got to get back. Singh will bust my ass if I’m even a second late.”

Cisco nodded, managing a faint smile.

“If you want…I can come by later tonight. Or something. If you need someone to talk to, or someone to help,” Barry said, pausing at Cisco’s door.

“I’ll think about it,” Cisco said, voice still nearly a whisper.

Barry nodded and stepped out, leaving Cisco to his whirling thoughts and the whirling, blue-tinged memory he hadn’t wanted to see – two faint impressions in a red-and-gold lightning storm, a screaming woman in the middle, before the Flash grabbed a child and _ran_ and the woman died.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *quiet sobbing* this is almost 4k oh my god why
> 
> I swear this wasn't meant to be angst when I started writing it. I don't know how this AU ended up being so sad and these characters freaked out but -- Cisco doesn't really have a support system like what he had at STAR Labs and while Barry has the STAR Labs crew, he doesn't have Cisco until now, and so you can imagine that some things have shifted. I mean, these are also just some traumatized people. 
> 
> Idk if a lot of this even makes sense any more, but I wrote the whole of this in a day and I'm tired so. Enjoy.


	4. Chapter 4

One of the worst things about being a metahuman was how nothing affected Barry in the same ways anymore. Beyond the obvious inability to get drunk, he had to eat so much more food now to not pass out inconveniently, and he had to consume a lot more coffee on average to get anything near the effect since before the accident.

(Caffeine still affected him where alcohol didn’t, go figure. Barry didn't want to look into it too deeply for fear of displeasing whatever higher power decided to allow him to not have to wake up in the mornings by himself.)

It was especially necessary because of the late nights he was pulling as the Flash, always rushing around Central City. Jitter's only stayed open so late, so Barry had made it a point to scope out other coffee shops in the area. Most of them shut down at 10:00 or 11:00 like Jitters did, but he did eventually find one that was open 24-hours. Or if it wasn't, the lights were always on and the sign turned to 'Open' when Barry ran past.

Eventually, the night came when Jitters was closed and Barry was exhausted. He was pushing himself too hard; he could too easily imagine the annoyed noises Caitlin would be making at him if she realized just how much time he spent out on the streets, but he couldn't help himself. How could he not help people when he had been granted such powers?

Point being, Caitlin actually kept reasonable hours. Barry may have lied to her and said he was going home when instead he was gearing up for another night of listening to the police chatter and simply running around the city for the rush of the wind against his face. Even that couldn't keep him on his toes forever, so feet dragging ever so slightly, Barry flashed into the coffee shop he had spotted, the one that always seemed to be open.

There was a guy behind the counter, sitting on a barstool and typing away on a laptop, his brow furrowed in concentration. His hair was pulled up in a bun, a pen sticking through it, and there were papers scattered around on the countertop. He didn't seem to notice Barry coming in, even though there was a bell atop the door that Barry had most definitely set off when he came through it.

Barry cleared his throat gently. The guy looked up.

"Hey," the barista said easily, apparently completely unfazed by the Flash standing in his shop. "What can I get for you?"

"The strongest coffee you have?" Barry asked.

The barista laughed. "Long night?" Without waiting for a response, he turned and started messing with the machine behind him.

"You could say that," Barry said, slowly approaching the countertop.

The barista turned, handing the prepared coffee to Barry in a to-go cup. "I assumed you would prefer something that could go with you if needed," he said drily, to what must have been Barry's uncertain expression, visible even behind the mask.

Barry took the cup, standing there awkwardly for a few seconds. The barista made to move back to his computer.

"Um," Barry said. "How much does this cost?"

"Don't worry about it," the barista said. "You do enough for the city, Flash."

"I don't want you to get in trouble with your boss," Barry said.

"Seriously, don't worry about it." Barista Guy smiled; it was a good smile, wide and genuine and handsome. "I'm my boss. I own this place. You deserve it."

Barry couldn't refute that, not without pushing too hard against the bounds of someone else's generosity, so he took a sip of his coffee instead and sighed blissfully at the caffeine boost.

Barista Guy tapped away at his laptop again, for all intents and purposes totally ignorant of the fact that Central City's superhero was standing in his shop and drinking his coffee. Barry dropped the paper cup in the trash and waved before he was setting back out into the city, but he took a careful note in his mind of the coffee shop; he would have to come back.

* * *

"What are your hours?" Barry asked the next time he dropped by, once again in the middle of the night.

"Super strong coffee again?" Barista Guy countered, already working on it. "There's not set hours for closing. I'm open until no one else is coming."

Barry looked around the shop, devoid of all customers, and glanced pointedly at Barista Guy's back.

"You're here, aren't you?" Barista Guy asked, not even turning around.

"It just – doesn't seem like a very sound business practice," Barry said delicately. "And when do you sleep?"

Barista Guy handed Barry his coffee. "It works," he said, and, "I don't. That's why it's so great to run a coffee shop."

* * *

"What's your name?" Barry asked, once it became obvious that he was going to be coming to this coffee shop a lot in the foreseeable future. He couldn't go around calling Barista Guy 'Barista Guy' forever.

"Cisco," Barista Guy said, grinning. He handed Barry his coffee and refused payment in the same casual way he always did.

* * *

"How did you end up running a coffee shop?"

"It's kind of a long story," Cisco said, leaning against the counter. He looked tired in a way that Barry rarely saw him, his hair coming out of its bun.

"I have time," Barry said.

Cisco hummed. "Maybe next time," he said, something flickering behind his eyes.

Not two minutes later, Barry was rushing out the door to deal with the fire being reported on the news.

* * *

"My freshman roommate was an asshole," Cisco said, apropos of nothing. Barry coughed into his coffee. "This is going somewhere, I promise," Cisco said. "He was kind of a terrible person. He was also a really terrible boyfriend, not only because he wasn't out to his parents but because he was just – ugh. He was a jerk. But I made a joke one time too many about opening a coffee shop based on the way we were going through coffee in our dorm room, and he – is it dumb to say he dared me to do it? He offered to fund me, partially because I was his boyfriend and partially because he knew it would annoy his parents and probably also partially because he knew I would always be obligated to give him coffee afterwards.

"When I say he was kind of a jerk, his parents were really shitty. Like, actual terrible human beings. Possibly dementors, the jury's really still out on that one. I tried to name this place Espresso Patronum, just to make sure they could never get in, but Har— but my boyfriend vetoed it."

Barry laughed. "Déjà Brew is still pretty good, I suppose," he said.

Cisco grinned. "Yeah. Anyway, things got bad with his parents later, but the shop was turning a profit and he'd been siphoning off money from his parents for a few years into his own account just in case, and so I still have this coffee shop and he still helps out if I have a bad month. He visits every so often, but ever since the particle accelerator..." Sadness flitted across Cisco's face.

"A lot of things have changed since then," Barry murmured into his mug.

"Don't I know it," Cisco said, low, like he hadn't meant for Barry to hear, and he stared into the middle distance like there was something there no one else could see.

* * *

Somehow Barry never thought about how he posed a danger to Cisco. It was easy to see with the Wests, with Caitlin and Ronnie, even if they could protect themselves – but he hadn’t spared a thought about Cisco, about how he was spending so much time at one specific coffee shop and visiting with the barista-owner and how some villains might take that as an _invitation._

So he could be forgiven for the stumble as he flashed into Déjà Brew one night and spotted someone already sitting on one of the bar stools at the front counter. His hood was down, his gloves nowhere in immediate sight, and his smile was more real than any Barry had ever seen on his face. Barry’s hummingbird heartbeat skipped a beat before picking up to a higher thrum than before, because the last time he had seen Hartley, Piper was trying to _kill_ him, shred him apart from the inside, and now he was here, near Cisco.

Hartley obviously heard him, turning and looking more startled than the ambush he had been setting up warranted; he must have _known_ Barry would fight him for trying to harm Cisco, so why did he even bother pretending?

A split second decision to _move_ —

“Don’t,” Cisco’s voice cut across calmly. One of his arms was outstretched toward Barry, not a gesture of help, but a flat stop, a hand up in preparation to act. Despite himself, Barry held still. “No fighting in my shop.”

“Yes, dear,” Hartley muttered sardonically, relaxing ever so slightly, the tense set of his shoulders upon realizing Barry had entered the shop fading away.

“He’s—” Barry started, eyes darting between the two of them.

“Without weapons, in my shop, here at my invitation,” Cisco listed off. “Also the co-owner and my ex-boyfriend.”

“Wait,” Barry said. “What?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this was going to be a part of Flashvibe Week for last May but I never posted it so now it's going here because there's a free space in the prompts and goddammit, I'm so tired, I need something that I've already written instead of having to make something new. 
> 
> (Why do I always makes Hartley Cisco's ex-boyfriend...?)
> 
> And yeah, Cisco is totally using his powers as Vibe to check the latest times that customers will be coming in and closing up or staying open based on that. Also, the first villain that gets the bright idea to attack Cisco at his coffee shop will get a very unpleasant surprise from its unamused, very powerful metahuman owner, said owner's boyfriend, and the owner's ex-boyfriend the Pied Piper, oh fuck, we didn't realize he was your ex, Hartley!


End file.
